With this blog I will focus on intentional thoughtful small tasks that you can do to improve your individual performance. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

Friday, November 11, 2016

I like solving problems because of the
satisfaction I feel once the issue or challenge is completed. But I had no
organizing consistent method to solving problems; my system of solving problems
was ad hoc.

There are two reasons why we tend to
see a problem as a problem. First, a problem has to be solved and we're not
sure how to find the best solution. Secondly, there will probably be conflicts
about what the best solution is.

Keep mind that problems and conflicts
are not unique and they happen all the time. Seeing it from the glass half full
perspective - problems are opportunities! Opportunities to improve a situation
or issue or an opportunity to improve a relationship. Problems are actually
providing us with information that we can utilize to do a better job.

The most common mistake in problem
solving is trying to find a solution instantly. That's a mistake because it
tries to put the solution at the beginning of the process, when what we need is
a solution at the end of the process. I have come across the S.O.L.V.E. model
to help me have a more systematic way of approaching and undertaking a problem.

·S stands for state the problem, clearly
and simply.

·O stands for outline the problem in more
detail by giving a complete picture.

·L reminds us to list as many solutions
as you can no matter how unusual the solution might seem.

·V tells us to view the list and make a decision about which
one to follow.

·E ask us to evaluate the success of our solution before and
after using it.

At first I thought this was a very simplistic model to
solve a problem but then I used it to make a decision about repairing my used car.
I decided to go ahead and repair the car because that was the best option after
I viewed my list of possible alternatives.Hopefully you don’t have a lot of problems in your life,
but if you do I recommend this model to solve it and remember – a problem is an
opportunity!

Saturday, October 29, 2016

As part of the
curriculum for a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs leadership course, I was
required to read the book, Now Discover
Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, published in
2001. The authors of this contrarian book say that we should not focus on
improving our weaknesses to excel in our workplaces.

Buckingham
and Clifton say, “Most organizations take their employees’ strengths for
granted and focus on minimizing their weaknesses.” Instead the authors present
evidence that organizations and individuals should direct their energy and time
to practicing and refining strengths in order to find enduring job satisfaction.
They conclude that “The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t
have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have.”

The book’s
seven chapters are divided into three main sections: The Anatomy of a Strength,
Discover the Source of Your Strengths, and Put Strengths to Work.

The Anatomy
of Strength focuses on presenting examples of famous individuals such as
billionaire investor Warren Buffett, golf professional Tiger Woods, Microsoft
founder Bill Gates and song writer Cole Porter and also narratives of ordinary
individuals who play to their strengths.

Strength is
defined by Buckingham and Clifton as, “consistent near perfect performance in
an activity.” There are three core principles of playing to your strength.
First, you must perform your strengths on a consistent basis. Secondly, you
don’t have to be well rounded at everything in order to succeed at your
strengths. Finally, you will outperform others by increasing your strengths,
never by obsessing on your weaknesses. The authors emphasize us to play to our
strengths and manage effectively around our weaknesses.

In order to build
our life around our strengths we need to distinguish our intrinsic or natural talents
from things we can learn such as knowledge and skills, identify our dominant natural
talents, and lastly utilize a common language or assessment tool (the authors
created The StrengthsFinder Profile to reveal 34 major talent themes) to
describe your talents.

Buckingham
and Clifton make some very interesting claims about knowledge, skills and
talent. Knowledge will not assure success, but success is difficult without it.
In order to excel in your chosen field, you will need to ascertain and practice
all the necessary skills but there are two flaws in skills. The first flaw
according to the authors is that skills will help you perform but they will not
help you excel. Secondly, when you learn and practice a skill correctly you
will improve but it “will not cover for a lack of talent.” Learning by
repeating an action may result in an improved outcome or behavior but “without
underlying talent, training won’t create a strength.”

Discover the
Source of Your Strength gives the reader insight into how you can identify your
natural talents. The authors provide the following three cues to discovering
your natural talents or strengths. First is yearnings usually revealed early in
life but not always. Next is rapid learning or “eureka moments”. If you are
able to pick up an action or behavior quickly – look beneath this eureka moment
because you may be able to identity your strength or strengths that made it
possible. The last cue that you are discovering a natural strength is the
satisfaction you achieve when you are accomplishing an activity. The authors
says if you find yourself looking forward to the activity and ask, “When can I
do this again?” – then that a good indication “that you are enjoying it and
that one of your talents is in play.”

The authors
created the StrengthsFinder Profile online assessment tool to assist
individuals discover their “greatest potential for a strength”. The profile
measures thirty-four themes of talents that Buckingham and Clifton uncovered
during their many years of research into excellence. Once an individual
completes the profile they will receive their five most dominant themes of
talent or “signature themes”. There are over 33 million possible combinations
of the top five. The themes may not be your strengths but they represent your
dominant “recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior – the promise of a
strength.” The authors caution that “a theme in isolation is neither good nor
bad. It is simply a recurring pattern that can either be cultivated into a
strength or squandered.”

In the last
section of the book, Put Strengths to Work, the authors give practical advice
on why many people avoid focusing on their strengths and why you should focus
on your signature themes in order to turn them into strengths.

I took the
StrengthsFinder Profile online assessment and my five most dominant themes are:
Restorative (love to solve problems), Discipline (routines are important),
Developer (see potential in others), Responsibility (emotionally bound to
follow through) and Relator (like being around people that are familiar). I
agree that these five themes are dominant areas of my life and career but I
don’t focus on them to the exclusion of other areas of my life that I want to
improve. But I fully agree with Buckingham and Clifton premise that by focusing
and utilizing our energy on our strengths and intrinsic talents instead of
trying to incrementally improve areas that we are not good at can substantially
reduce frustrations and anxiety we feel about our weaknesses.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

According to the Wikipedia entry about deliberate practice psychologist
K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of Psychology at Florida State University, has
been a pioneer in researching deliberate practice and what it means. According
to Ericsson:

People believe that because expert performance is
qualitatively different from normal performance the expert performer must be
endowed with characteristics qualitatively different from those of normal
adults. [...] We agree that expert performance is qualitatively different from
normal performance and even that expert performers have characteristics and
abilities that are qualitatively different from or at least outside the range
of those of normal adults. However, we deny that these differences are
immutable, that is, due to innate talent. Only a few exceptions, most notably
height, are genetically prescribed. Instead, we argue that the differences
between expert performers and normal adults reflect a life-long period of
deliberate effort to improve performance in a specific domain.

This
Wikipedia entry also cites criticism of deliberate practice. It states the
following, “Two recent articles in Current Directions in Psychological
Sciencecriticize deliberate practice and argue that, while it is
necessary for reaching high levels of performance, it is not sufficient, with
other factors such as talent being important as well.”

Malcolm Gladwell’s point-of-view about deliberate practice is different
than Ericsson’s view.Gladwell, staff
writer at New York Magazine and
author of five books on The New York Times
Best Seller list including Outliers: The Story of Success said in a May 2016 Freakonomics podcast interview
that, “He’s [Ericsson] a hard
practice guy, and I’m a soft practice guy.” Gladwell says that talent is
important with intentional dedication to practice and having a support system is
vital to produce superior outcomes. It not all about methodical effort as
Ericsson claims.

I
agree with Gladwell that raw talent combined with deliberate practice is not
enough to become a superior performer. The myth that hard work alone will get
you to the top of your chosen field is a fallacy.

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Grit has two
simple meanings as defined by Merriam-Webster online dictionary. The first definition
of grit is very small pieces of sand or stone. The second definition of grit is
mental toughness and courage. Grit is also defined in psychology as a positive,
non-cognitive trait based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term
goal, coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their objective.

According to
Merriam-Webster, grit is in the top twenty percent of words used. Perhaps the
word is more popular because Angela Duckworth.

Ms. Duckworth, professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and founder and
Scientific Director of the Character Lab, whose mission is to advance the
science and practice of character development. When Duckworth was in her late
twenties, she left her job as a management consultant to teach math to seventh
graders in the NYC public school system. During her experience in the classroom
she noticed that effort not talent was enormously central in success outcomes.

In a 2009
paper, she and co-author Patrick Quinn developed a “grit scale” for 1,218 new West
Point cadets. Duckworth and Quinn used the cadets answers to the grit scale and
reached the conclusion that grit was highly predictive of the chance of
completing “Beast Barracks.” This West Point program for freshman cadets consisted
of 17-hour days for seven consecutive weeks of classroom instruction and
physical training.

In her 2013 seminal
six minutes and twelve seconds TED presentation, which has been viewed over 8
million times, Duckworth was propelled to prominence as she explained how grit plays
a role in success. Her first book published in 2016, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, was a New York Times
bestseller. The book wanted to explain why some individuals succeed and others
fail. Her research found that talent is not a guarantor of success and that
grit—a combination of passion and perseverance for an important goal is the
foundation of high achievers in every field.

What
distinguished high performers, she found, was largely how they processed
feelings of frustration, disappointment, or even boredom. While some
individuals took these as signals to quit and move on to some easier task, high
performers did not. It was as if they had been conditioned to believe that
struggle was not a signal for alarm.

Is grit
overrated when it comes to predicting success? In Marcus Crede's report, Much Ado about Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grid Literature, says that, “My overall
assessment is that grit is far less important than has commonly been assumed
and claimed and it doesn’t tell us anything that we don’t already know.”

One key
aspect of Crede’s analysis is that the impact of grit is exaggerated,
especially when considering wider populations of individuals—not just high
achievers in Duckworth’s initial studies. Secondly, grit scores and conscientiousness
scores are very highly correlated. This is important because Duckworth’s
research concludes that grit is a skill.

But,
psychologists have determined that conscientiousness isn’t a skill—it’s a personality
trait. According to the field of psychology, a trait is driven by some inexplicable
combination of genetics and ecosystem. Thus, one’s grit is not necessarily changeable,
especially in adulthood, however Duckworth in her writings suggest that grit
is.

Duckworth
also came to another interesting observation about effort and talent. She says
people don’t like “strivers” because then they start questioning themselves and
why they don’t have the success like others. Strivers invite
self-comparisons. Most people like to think that some people are just naturally
more talented than others.

Duckworth says that grit is hard work, tedious and
not attractive. The majority of individuals like to keep their failures private
and their successes broadcasted to the public. Thus, the “hidden” practice among
successful people is costly to society because it hides the amount of failure that
goes into success. We think we don’t have what it takes to succeed and give up. The struggle should not be a signal to give up!Duckworth is the
first to say that the essence of grit remains a mystery. Even if the origins of
grit are difficult to source I believe that stick–to–itiveness does play a role in the outcome of an individual’s
success towards a significant and meaningful goal. I would rather have grit
than be without it!

Monday, June 13, 2016

Believe it or
not, success is often the byproduct of repeated failures. The difference between long-term success
and failure is our reaction to it. Do you know about spectacular failures of
the following individuals?

James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner magnate, made 5,126 prototypes
of his namesake upright bag less vacuum cleaner before getting it right on the
5,127th time. Each time he erred, he reminded himself that he was
learning how to make a better device.

Fashion designer Vera Wang failed to make
the 1968 U.S. Olympic figure-skating team. She later became an editor at the
fashion magazine, Vogue, but was passed over for the editor-in-chief position.
Today she leads a fashion empire and is known for her designer wedding dresses.

Albert Einstein had difficulty communicating and learning
in a traditional manner. His communication and behavioral challenges were not suggestive
of a lack of intelligence. Einstein said he wasn’t necessarily any smarter than
most, but he “stayed” with problems longer. For one experiment it took him eight
years before it was successful. He famously said, “I have not failed. I’ve just
found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Walt Disney was fired from the newspaper, Kansas City
Star, because his editor felt he lacked imagination and had no good ideas. His
first business landed in bankruptcy because he was unable to manage money and
wound up heavily in debt. When he formed the Walt Disney Company, all of his
past failures paved the way for a very successful business.

Steven Spielberg, award winning movie director and
producer, was rejected by the University of Southern California School of
Cinematic Arts multiple times.

Colonel Harland David Sanders was fired from dozens of jobs before
founding Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC).

J.K. Rowling was a single mom living off public
assistance when she began writing the first Harry Potter novel. She became
the first billionaire author in 2004.

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, had his first
book rejected by 27 different authors. His books have sold over 600 million
copies.

Jay-Z couldn’t get any record label to sign
him. He and his friends sold this first single out of the trunk of their car. He
co-founded his own record company called Roc-a-fella Records with his two partners.
According to Forbes magazine, he is worth about $550 million.

So
how exactly are we supposed to rebound from failures without getting
discouraged?

According to Noa
Kageyama, Ph.D., in his article, "The Upside of Failure, the Downside of Success,
and How to Keep Improving No Matter What":

After
a failure, we should focus on the specific errors we made PLUS the specific
things we did well. Focusing on both the good and bad seems to result in the
most learning and performance improvement. Presumably, if we focus only
on our mistakes after failures, we’ll get discouraged and spiral into that
unproductive dark place.

Ryan Babineaux, Ph.D. and lecturer at Stanford offers five
suggestions from his book, Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win.

(1) Identify Your Fear: Find something that
you would like to try but have hesitated to do because of your fear of failure.

(2) Reverse Your Thinking: Come up with a way
that you can fail at it as quickly as possible.

(3) Do It Anyway: Get out there and
give it a try. Make mistakes and have fun doing it. Ask others for help and
feedback.

(4) Fail Forward: Use your
exploratory actions as a means to learn and discover what you need to know.

(5) Find the Next Challenge: Seek out the next
opportunity to do things at the limits of your abilities.

Don’t let
set-backs paralyze and demoralize you. Failures truly are “learning
opportunities” to re-evaluate what you may be doing wrong but also what you did
well. With each opportunity you are learning what to do and what not to do.